Monday, July 30, 2012

This poem is a response to Wordle #67 from The Sunday Whirl, a poetry prompt suggesting the use of twelve words to write a poem: frenzy, strange, ball, rough, falling, robust, settle, wayward, sublime, channel, attack, life. You can learn more about The Sunday Whirl and read other responses at:http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/wordle-67/

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Last night, I slept for 13 hours. Yes, I was that tired. Exhausted but content. Since Monday we have entertained company, well not really company...I should say family. Each day we've had 6-8 adults and 2-4 children at our house; family who've joined us for a summertime visit.

We visited with each other, caught up on family news and stories, played cards or paper crafts with the children, had many barbecues, late night conversations under the stars, laughed and sang, enjoyed the summer days and evenings.

﻿It felt a bit like a camp ground here with a Volkswagen camper van in the driveway and a 40 foot RV at the curb. At bedtime, everyone went off to their own cozy places to rest.

﻿During the day, we played in the pool or caravaned to The Rocks to sight-see and picnic or sat around talking, eating, and drinking Caesars...or doing whatever anyone felt like doing. We enjoyed each other with no agenda.

﻿Our time together was full of laughter and love. Though there were many meals to prepare and dishes to clean, laundry to wash and supplies to purchase, there were many hands to help. It was worth it all to see family, to spend long summer days together and to enjoy each other.

When everyone left, the house had a few extra finger prints and spills to clean, but was so quiet...too quiet. It was fun to have family come and spend time with us and we are missing them so much already.

Yes, I slept for 13 hours last night. I am catching up on rest and feeling almost ready for the next batch of family visitors, arriving on Saturday.

This is a response to The Sunday Whirl, a wordle poetry prompt in which one is to write a poem including the 12 words: swing, fling, rosy, powders, melancholy, stray, grasses, gold, erotic, pale, cover, spray. This is Wordle #66 for July 22, 2012.

Red text includes hyperlinks that take you to another web page where you can find out more.

The focus was to strengthen skills in the craft of poetry, using metaphor, imagery and the poetic line.The goal was not to create a masterpiece in one day, but to study and learn more about the basic tools for poetry writing, using explanation, writing exercises, examinations of sample poetry and sharing of our own pieces.This was indeed what we did.

We seven students and Ian talked; the dialogue shed light on questions about technique and this in turn opened doors and pushed us beyond familiar territories.We began with warm-up exercises on imagery:

*working like a _________________________________

*cold as _______________________________________

*as unpredictable as_____________________________

*as red as_____________________________________

And as we shared (all of us shared, including Ian), it was helpful to hear how others’ minds worked; it generated creativity.It helped to learn that the instructor, a published poet, went through the same processes, he was teaching us to use.Each workshop participant was at the same time dealing with the same technique, and was focusing on the same assignment, so we became interested in and learned from the work of each other.

We examined “My Shoes” by Charles Simic, “X-ray” by Dave Hickey and “Ode to a Stinging Jelly-fish (Portuguese Man-O-War)” by Roger Nash.We admitted to feeling jealous of their abilities, all the while admiring their poems.

We created enlarged images from our initial warm-up exercises.Here is mine:

Birth and Death

Dark eyes are red.

She’s just given birth,

a son,

for a husband who

runs around,

and she is raw,

red as fresh road-kill

bleeding out.

We set up our own metaphors, created lists of similarities, noted associations and connections, searched for fresh ways to make our poetry bits and nubs leap to life.Ian encouraged us to make our images stretch, to do more work, to connect with emotions, to enrich details, to freshen the world. The lists exploded and we picked a concrete image to begin.

I worked on a metaphor between hand-churning old-fashioned ice-cream and the beginnings and subsequent survival of a couple’s relationship.It’s a work in progress so I won’t share it here but it has potential and I was content with accomplishing a good start.

The workshop participants shared exercises, beginnings of poems, great lines and shitty lines.We laughed and we learned.We talked about titles and how to make them work for our poems.We talked about line breaks and ways to milk meaning, and yet more meaning from spaces, and ways to still or rush a clause to illuminate with surprises.

Ian shared this from “Paradise Lost” by John Milton:

Of what he was, what is, and what must be

Worse.

We understood the line break and spacing suggested another meaning.

Our minds stretched through writing exercises, using restrictions.One assignment was to use the same five words in each stanza of a two stanza poem; the words were plain, light, glass, river, shadow.Mine follows.

(Untitled)

The river is glass-still

reflects light and shadow,

root to root, stem to stem,

plain and perfect

at full tide.

The tide shifts,

stabs the glass,

ripples spread,

shadows wrinkle,

shake the light.

The river plain begins

to shimmer and dance.

Not good poetry certainly, but you have the idea.

At the end of the day, we shared poems we had brought with us; not an easy thing to do, like giving birth and hearing someone say, “Gosh, that’s an ugly baby.”It was helpful to listen to the responses and suggestions, to know the others were sharing their thoughts about what worked and what needed tweaking or a complete overhaul.It was another way to learn.And my day was all about learning.

The workshop emphasized that writing a poem was a passionate relationship between craft and seriousness of endeavour. It took place in a crucible, where the wild unfettered mind met the responsible, purposeful self and laboured with fervor and desire, with ability and honest work and created a fresh way in which to perceive our world.

The workshop day was well spent.My time, my money and my energy were well spent.I was grateful for the opportunity to work with Ian LeTourneau and to learn from the others.

I hope to learn more next year, hope to attend the full week and follow courses on other genres of writing, on editing, on pitching a story and on publishing.I hope to get acquainted with other poets and writers and continue to learn new ways to freshen the world through my own writing.

For now… thank you, Laurie Glenn Norris for organizing with the University of New Brunswick, for the Maritime Writers’ Workshops and especially, thank you, Ian LeTourneau, for the gift of yourself.

I’ll see you next year.

If you click on the words in red, you will go to another website with additional information.

This is a light-hearted response to the poetry prompt for Friday, July 13, 2012 from Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. They suggest writing a rondeau of 13 lines and a 4 syllable refrain, the first half of the first line, used twice.The rondeau is arranged in 3 unequal stanzas, usually with two main rhymes, plus a third rhyme in refrain.It’s supposed to be iambic lines with 4 stresses, but I have not quite captured the iambic cadence in each line.The rhyme scheme is aabba, aabc, aabbac.One of the most well-known examples of a rondeau is the poem "In Flanders Fields."

If you click on words in red in the text, you will go to another site with additional information.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

When housewives returnChristmas balls to the drawers,when the old year's gone...subtracting months from eternity,when the New Year's rind fallsoff, and entices happy wishes...then,and then,there is something that spurnsthe ignorant(caught celebrating),as yet unaware of the stingsthat await,when they biteinto the pulp...of what comesnext.

This is a poem I wrote for TheSunday Whirl, a weekly wordle for July 8, 2012 using the following list of given words: housewives, ignorant, rind, spurn, subtracting, fall, months, sting, drawers, eternity, balls and year. The Sunday Whirl is a poetry prompt site which you can link to by clicking here.

This is not an earth-moving poem but one which is reflective of my whiny state, of having a summer cold for the second time this summer. I dream of being well again and enjoying the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of summer, and of writing better when my head is clear.